Conventionally, operating table tops are covered with a single layer cotton sheet whose edges drape down at the table sides. During the course of an operation, a significant amount of blood tends to escape from the patient and is absorbed by the cotton sheet. After the operation, it is difficult to remove the sheet from the table top due to the weight and mass of the patient overlying the same. Typically, the patient must be logrolled, that is, rolled over towards one side of the table, the sheet folded over towards that side, the patient rolled to the opposite side and off the sheet and then the sheet is removed from the table top.
Log-rolling is often difficult due to the weight and mass of the patient. Secondly, the patient is in the worst possible condition to be moved, both because of the operation performed and additionally because, while under anesthesia, the body does not employ its normal defense mechanisms to forced movement. Thus, the patient may bruise portions of the body during logrolling or other forced movement necessary to remove the blood soaked operating table cloth or cover sheet.
Within recent years, the applicants have developed a patient mover for facilitating the movement of patients in hospitals to and from gurneys, hospital beds, operating tables, X-ray equipment such as particularly CAT scanners and the like as set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 4,272,856. The patient mover employs a plenum chamber formed by several thin flexible sheets, sealed together about their edges, subjected to low pressure air to inflate the plenum chamber to the extent of lifting the patient. The bottom thin flexible sheet bears thousands of pinhole type perforations through which air escapes to create a thin air film bearing between the bottom of the patient mover and the underlying relatively rigid support surface such as the operating table, gurney top, hospital bed, etc. Such patient movers, which are somewhat similar to an air mattress when inflated, lifts the patient up, with the low pressure air escaping through the holes creating a frictionless air bearing.
The patient mover thus facilitates the transfer of the patient to and from the operating table, and permits the patient to rest on the patient mover (whose air mattress or plenum chamber is deflated), a problem develops when an absorbent cotton sheet or chuck is placed over the patient mover for capturing the blood from the patient during an operation. After the operation, the cotton sheet must be removed prior to the patient being moved off the operating table while still on the same patient mover that placed him thereon prior to the operation.
It is, therefore, a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved, sterile, absorbent sheet or pad for use on an operating table during an operation for positioning between the patient and the operating table top which may be easily removed, which provides no trauma to the patient, and which absorbent sheet may be particularly useful as a sheet overlying an air bearing type patient mover.